


guns not butter

by papyrocrat



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: New Caprica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-17 15:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat





	guns not butter

Maya doesn’t have much to pack to more down to the planet. Essential support services and young families are priority settlers. Maybe as a courtesy, or maybe day care is considered an essential support service in the new world, or maybe just coincidentally, she and Laura Roslin are on the first shuttle down.

The President, true to her word, has dropped by to see the baby more than once. And, Maya’s been touched to notice, on Maya herself.

Roslin vacates immediately in a show of support for Baltar’s new world – or, Maya realizes and her belly twists with sympathy, she had nowhere to live once Baltar moved onto Colonial One.

And the president – _no_ , she’s insisted more than once with a tense twist wringing the usual graciousness of her smile, _it’s just Laura now_ – gets the largest tents  from one of her many loyalists, and she turns one of them into a school.

It feels all too natural to move in with her – mama and baby and auntie under one porous, flimsy roof  – these things happen so quickly here at the edge of the world – but she’s not alone when Isis cries at night anymore; she can keep busy during the day and feel the earth beneath her feet and for the first time since the end of the worlds, she can vaguely remember what _home_ felt like.

Just as they’re settling into routine in the school, Isis gets a cough. It’s nothing particularly scary, she doesn’t think, and certainly nothing Laura doesn’t care for at her small school several times a month. It is strange when Laura insists on taking the baby up to see Doc Cottle, not when she’s avoided Galactica for the last two months as if she’s got to prove she’s put down roots in their pebbly soil.

Maya takes care of the school that day. It’s surreal to be twisted into worry over everything that could go wrong with one small child with one tinny cough, after everything they’ve been through, but Laura’s not here with her calm, curious stare.

So when she does come back with nothing more than a small bottle of ipecac, Maya tries not to wonder. She must look curious, though, because Laura smiles back a little sheepishly. “I guess it’s true, you overreact when it’s one of your own. I never expected to find that out for myself.”

The idea of Laura Roslin panicking over anything strikes Maya as patently absurd. She phrases it more diplomatically. “Laura. What were you really worried about? Is there something you didn’t tell me?”

And then Laura does panick, just for a second, goes to adjust her glasses and hide her face.

“Hera almighty-“ even Laura flinches at that, and she knows before the minute she says it. “It was all true, wasn’t it? That hack at the Gazette? Some half-Cylon baby?”

She forces herself not to back away from the crib; she cannot bring herself to lean into it. Isis is her daughter and she doesn’t care; isis is a monster like the world has never seen before.

“It’s a lot.” She’s fixed her eyes on the crib, but Laura looks at her.  “There’s a lot I can’t tell you, and even more I don’t know. But this had to happen sometime, I suppose.”

“Why’d you do it?”

Laura’s eyebrows shoot to the moon.  “That’s what you’re going to start with?”

“I know, you have your reasons, and you don’t have to justify yourself.”

“That’s correct. I didn’t then, and I sure as hell don’t now.”

“What, for her safety? Was the baby a security risk?”

“Yes, and yes.”

Maya forces herself to ask. “Is she dangerous?”

“She’s not going to grow fangs.”

They look at each other for a moment and then laugh, and it’s not like anything else in their frakked-up world makes sense anyway.

“She might.”

“Little chrome tail?”

“Laser eyes.”

 Laura stops then.

“It shouldn’t change anything. Nobody knows but you, me, Tory, and a doctor on Galactica.”

And of course, it doesn’t. They go to school, and Isis cries and eats and ruins their dreams with her nightmares, and they are painfully normal.

For a while.


End file.
